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Georgia sues Cumming over alleged open meetings violation

ATLANTA- An Atlanta suburb and its mayor violated the state’s open meetings law by stopping a citizen from videotaping a council meeting, the Georgia attorney general alleged in a lawsuit Tuesday.

Cumming Mayor H. Ford Gravitt ordered a citizen, Nydia Tisdale, to stop taping in April and had her and the camera forcibly removed from the room, Attorney General Sam Olens said in the lawsuit. Olens claims Tisdale later returned and tried to record it with her cellphone and was again ordered to stop.

Gravitt and city attorney Dana Miles did not immediately return calls seeking comment Tuesday afternoon.

The lawsuit references two YouTube videos — one by Tisdale, the other by the city. In both, Gravitt can be seen and heard instructing a police officer to remove the camera from the room. Tisdale can also be heard telling the mayor that she’s exercising her rights under Georgia law and telling the police officer to take his hands off of her.

The lawsuit says Gravitt violated Georgia’s open meetings law on two separate occasions, first by forcibly removing Tisdale’s video camera and, second, by ordering Tisdale to stop recording the meeting with her phone.

The lawsuit marks the first time the attorney general’s office has used provisions enacted by an overhaul of the state open meetings law that allow it to seek civil penalties — not just criminal penalties — against government officials that violate the law.

The court may impose a civil fine of up to $1,000 for a first violation by a government official and an additional fine of up to $2,500 for each additional violation within a 12-month period of when the first penalty is imposed.